There may be a time and a place for everything. The difficulty is figuring out when and where.

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

90% Done, And I Don't Think It's Half Bad, Actually....

So. Here's the thing about writing. It's a thing that I always tell my students when I need to talk them off the ledge, but I conveniently forget it when I myself am on the edge. The only way for a paper to get written is for you to write it. Oh, and also, the only way for you to refine your ideas and to clarify your argument and what you think is to write it all down. Because the kind of thinking that you can do in writing is far more substantial than the kind of thinking that you can do that is confined to your own brain. When you write, you learn what you think - even if you didn't know that you thought it. I know this, but I apparently need to relearn it periodically.

2 comments:

Because the kind of thinking that you can do in writing is far more substantial than the kind of thinking that you can do that is confined to your own brain.

YES!

A related point is illustrated by this anecdote: One of my trainees and I discussed a manuscript he was writing and decided on a particular angle. He spent about a week generating a complete draft coming at the topic from this angle.

After I read this draft, I realized that the angle wasn't optimal, and indicated that we actually needed to come at it from a different angle, which would require substantial rewriting. The trainee went ballistic, angrily accusing me of "wasting his time" by not having told him the correct angle in the first place.

The point is that writing is a path-dependent process, and sometimes you just can't arrive at the optimal destination without meandering around and taking some detours along the way. Corollary is that you frequently learn some important shit while off on those detours. Consequently, it is fucking absurd to look back and in hindsight consider any non-linear path to the destination to have been a "waste of time".

Of course, being a brilliant mentor, I persuasively explained all of this to my trainee who happily pranced off back into the lab to joyously revise the manuscript accordingly. (Well, actually, he stalked off in a major-league snit muttering under his breath about what a dickbag I am. lolz! If your trainees are never mad at you, you almost certainly aren't mentoring them effectively.)